At first glance, the striking black-and-white portraits in the Morse Institute Library suggest the craggy granite head of the Old Man in the Mountain in New Hampshire.

Chris Bergeron

At first glance, the striking black-and-white portraits in the Morse Institute Library suggest the craggy granite head of the Old Man in the Mountain in New Hampshire.

Hanging in a row, their faces are wrinkled yet their eyes are bright and alert. Most are elderly yet they exude an inner peace that's neither young nor old.

"They look wise; like you could learn something from them," observed William Burrill, 61. "Like a wise leader. Or the way I imagine the 'Old Man and the Sea."'

The retired utility worker from Attleboro was surprised to learn teenage students from the Walnut Hill School in Natick painted the large, exquisitely detailed portraits.

Painting and visual arts teacher Ken Tighe said the portraits were made as part of a multi-step assignment to help students work in shades of light and dark.

"The kids really over-achieved on this assignment," said Tighe who began teaching at Walnut Hill in 1986. "The class had all levels mixed together from freshmen to seniors."

The 3-by-3-foot paintings were also shown at The Center for Arts in Natick and will be displayed in South Station in Boston from June 1-14. They will remain on display in the Natick library through March 26.

For the assignment usually given at the start of a term, Tighe asked students to find a black-and-white photograph of an older person's face in a magazine or online. "I suggested they choose someone older because they might have a little more character as different kinds of light went over their faces," he said.

After choosing the photo, Tighe had students duplicate it on a copier "to keep them from blending the image so each tone existed on its own."

After gluing the new image onto cardboard, he had them cover it with a grid so they could draw in pencil a larger, "exact" version. For the final step, each student painted the enlarged face with black-and-white oil paint.

By "attacking the drawn image in a formal and exacting way," Tighe said students' final paintings "took on an extremely powerful quality on their own."

Though assigned as part of a technical exercise, the painted portraits are impressive character studies, unsentimental, richly detailed and evocative of their subjects' moods.

Graduate Maura Goldfine's painting of a woman smoking conveys a defiant pride. A junior, Kyung Won Shin captured the weariness and resilience of an elderly woman. Emily Schulert depicted actor Morgan Freeman with an air of confident openness.

"I like painting people the most," explained the 16-year-old junior from Kennebunk, Maine. "Maybe that's because (portraits) are the most expressive."

A visual arts major, who's taking Tighe's painting class for the fifth time, she said the exercise "taught me to look at the overall image rather than painting up close and too tight."

While attempting to capture precise shades of color, Schulert said her finished portrait "gave Morgan Freeman kind of a religious feeling like he was looking up to heaven."

Senior Jane Lee said painting a careworn elderly woman with a deeply lined face taught her "to see how complicated the human face can be."

The 18-year-old Korea native said she initially chose to paint the woman's face because a reflection in her subject's glasses forced her to distinguish the gradations of black and white.

A visual arts major, Lee said studying at Walnut Hill helped her develop a recognizable style based on tight brush strokes that add paint "like building a wooden sculpture."

The assignment also gave her a new perspective on aging, she said. "The woman's wrinkles made her face interesting," said Lee. "Young people don't know how they're going to change when they get older."

THE ESSENTIALS:

The Morse Institute Library is at 14 East Central St., Natick.

It is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday.

For information, call the Morse institute Library at 508-647-6520 or visit www.morseinstitute.org.

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